Box 90772 Durham, NC 27708 phone: 919.684.6402 fax: 919.684.5459 North Carolina Press Contact: Sarah Tondu [email protected] 919.613.2188 National Press Contact: Lisa Labrado [email protected] 646.214.5812 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2016 SAMUEL H. SCRIPPS/AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL AWARD PRESENTED TO LAR LUBOVITCH Durham, NC, January 19, 2016-The American Dance Festival (ADF) will present the 2016 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement to Artistic Director and choreographer, Lar Lubovitch. Established in 1981 by Samuel H. Scripps, the annual award honors choreographers who have dedicated their lives and talent to the creation of modern dance. Mr. Lubovitch's work, acclaimed throughout the world, is renowned for its musicality, emotional style, highly technical choreography, and deeply humanistic voice. The award will be presented to Mr. Lubovitch in a brief ceremony on Monday, July 11th at 7:00pm, prior to Lar Lubovitch Dance Company's performance at the Durham Performing Arts Center. "We are exceptionally delighted to honor Lar Lubovitch with this award. For decades, his breathtaking work has drawn audiences with its big, full-bodied, fluid movement, and year after year, he continues to draw the best dancers in the industry to perform his gorgeous works," stated ADF Director Jodee Nimerichter. Born in Chicago in 1943, Lar Lubovitch began his dance education at The Juilliard School in NYC in 1962, where his teachers were Martha Graham, José Limón, Anthony Tudor, and Donald McKayle, in whose company Mr. Lubovitch subsequently began his professional career. In 1968, after performing in numerous modern, ballet, and jazz companies, he created the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, now in its 48th season. For his company he has choreographed over 110 dances, celebrated for their musicality, humanity, and rhapsodic style. Called "a national treasure" by Variety and named "one of the ten best choreographers" by The New York Times, Mr. Lubovitch and his company have appeared over the years in almost every state in the US and toured internationally. During the 80s, the company toured under the auspices of the US State Department’s Cultural Exchange Program throughout Eastern Europe and Asia. The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company has been the recipient of numerous National Endowment awards, including, in recent years, several "masterpiece grants" for the reconstruction of earlier seminal works. His dances have also appeared in the repertoires of major dance companies throughout the world, including American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, and many others. His Othello, A Dance in Three Acts (1997), a co-production of American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet, was broadcast on PBS' Great Performances and nominated for an Emmy Award. His dances on film also include Fandango, also broadcast on PBS (International Emmy Award), and My Funny Valentine, for the Robert Altman film The Company (American Choreography Award). Lubovitch has also made a notable contribution in the field of ice dancing, beginning in 1978, with dances for Olympians John Curry, Peggy Fleming, and Dorothy Hamill, and in subsequent years for Paul Wylie, Brian Orser, and others. For Anglia Television in Great Britain, he created a full-length ice-dance special, The Sleeping Beauty, also broadcast on PBS and on the A&E network, and The Planets, starring Olympic ice dancers Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay (nominated for an International Emmy, cable Ace and Grammy awards). In 2004, he was honored by the Ice Theatre of New York with an award for his contribution to the advancement of ice dancing. Lubovitch made his Broadway debut in 1987 with choreography for Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, for which he received a Tony nomination. In 1993, he received the Astaire Award from the Theatre Development Fund for his dances in The Red Shoes, including a twenty-minute ballet which subsequently entered the repertoire of American Ballet Theatre and the National Ballet of Canada. In 1996, he created new dances for the Tony Award winning revival of The King and I and in 2002, the choreography for The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Berlin, Germany. In 2004, he was honored with the Elan Award for his work in Broadway theater. In order to present a wide variety of excellent dance and to build dance audiences in his native Chicago, in 2007 he founded the Chicago Dancing Festival together with the Lubovitch company's Chicago-based dancer, Jay Franke. The festival is a series of performances by major American dance companies that takes place the last week of August at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Harris Theater, the Auditorium Theatre, and Chicago's Millennium Park. The Chicago Dancing Festival reaches over 15,000 audience members annually and is completely free to the public. In 2007, Lubovitch was named "Chicagoan of the Year" by the Chicago Tribune, and in 2008, both Lubovitch and Franke were named by Chicago Magazine as "Chicagoans of the Year" for having created the Chicago Dancing Festival. In 2011, he was named a Ford Fellow by United States Artists and also received the Dance/USA Honors Award. In 2012, his dance Crisis Variations was awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse for outstanding choreography at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In 2013, the American Dance Guild honored him for lifetime achievements, and in May of 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by The Juilliard School in New York City. This spring, he will premiere a new dance based on the Pushkin poem "The Bronze Horseman" at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Previously the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award has been presented to Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, Erick Hawkins, Twyla Tharp, Anna Sokolow, Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty, Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, Anna Halprin, Fayard and Harold Nicholas, Pina Bausch, Pilobolus, Garth Fagan, Maguy Marin, Eiko and Koma, Bill T. Jones, Murray Louis, Mark Morris, Laura Dean, Ohad Naharin, Martha Clarke, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, William Forsythe, Lin Hwai-min, Anjelin Preljocaj, and posthumously in honor of Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, José Limón, Pearl Primus, and Helen Tamiris. Performances during ADF's 83rd season will be presented June 16-July 30, 2016 at the Durham Performing Arts Center, Duke University's Reynolds Industries Theater, and other venues in and around the Durham area. ADF will also present a New York season August 1-August 6, 2016 at The Joyce Theater. For detailed information about ADF's programs please visit americandancefestival.org. PHOTOGRAPHY AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST Click here for PDF of press release. About ADF: Founded in 1934 in Bennington, Vermont, ADF remains an international magnet for choreographers, dancers, teachers, students, critics, musicians, and scholars to learn and create in a supportive environment. ADF's wide range of programs includes performances, artist services, educational programs and classes, community outreach, national and international projects, archives, humanities projects, publications, and media projects. ADF has been presenting the best in modern dance for 83 years. americandancefestival.org. .